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Paolo Biagi

A look at shell-midden and cemetery sites discovered in Oman that date back to the fifth millenium BCE, testifying to the levels of development in areas around the Indus Valley civilization thousands of years before it reached its peak.

One of the first articles to explore the significance of the Rohri flint mines near Mohenjo-daro, who use reaches back hundreds of thousands of years and which played an important role in the ancient Indus civilization as well.

The assemblage recovered during excavation of the Acheulian Ziarat Pir Shaban site comprises 29,047 artifacts, instruments, cores and hammerstones included. These data confirm the presence of a Late Palaeolithic workshop on site.

Ras Gadani and Phuari were surveyed in the 2000s by the Italian Archaeological Mission in Las Bela and Lower Sindh. The discovery of a few sites on the two headlands has shown the importance of the Las Bela coast for the archaeology of the northern Arabian Sea.

Surveys conducted along the southeastern coast of Las Bela in the following years have shown that shell middens with different characteristics and variable chronology exist in many places among which are Gadani and Phuari Headlands and the shores of Lake Siranda. Shell middens are places where the debris from eating shellfish and other food has accumulated over time.